Israel-EU agreement to reduce flight delays

Israel and the European Union have signed a strategic agreement with the European Organization for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol) that provides advanced aviation services for managing and planning air-traffic flows to reduce delays in flight times.

The reduction in flight times is gradually expected to come into effect over the coming months. Above and beyond the emotional distress, flight delays can have a heavy economic cost. According to Eurocontrol, flight delays at Ben-Gurion Airport as of September 2015 totaled an average of eight hours per day. At a cost of $100 per minute delay, this adds up to an economic loss of $1.5 million per month.

Eurocontrol is responsible for control and navigation services over European airspace. Being that 90 percent of flights to and from Israel fly over Europe (either to Europe itself or onto North America), through Cyprus’s increasingly crowded airspace, and taking into account the growing number of flights, the Israel Airports Authority decided to join Eurocontrol.

Until recently, Eurocontrol was not open to non-European members. But the organization has decided to gradually allow membership of non-European countries, and Israel and Morocco are currently being admitted as they have signed EU open-skies agreements.